Beautiful Lies

People are fascinated by the German Nazis much more so than they are by the Soviet Communists.

Ever wonder why?

Both system were organized death on a mass scale – and the Soviet version was worse and lasted longer. But the Soviets were drab and boring. No charismatic Fuhrer; their uniforms were ill-fitting and ugly.

The Nazis, on the other hand, knew how to dress.

Point being, evil is more attractive, it seems, when it is attractively presented. Beautiful words can convey hideous ideas.

The Gettysburg Address, for instance.

It is hard to imagine a more audaciously despicable concatenation ofstylized lies, of white-is-black, two-plus-two-equals-five inversions of reality presented more elegantly.

It claims that “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

The last part is italicized to emphasize the literary skullduggery at work.

Abe was correct about his dates – the four score and seven years ago part, which sounds dreamy and romantic as opposed to “87 years ago,” i.e., in 1776 – the date of the Declaration of Independence from Great Britain.

But this business about the new nation being “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”? Yes, the words are in the Declaration. But Jefferson meant a different thing than Abe asserts. The former intended to convey the idea of every person possessing equal rights. And to Jefferson, this meant above all the right to be left in peace, to pursue one’s happiness as defined by oneself.

The latter used the word in the egalitarian sense.

It is the ur statement – in America – of the doctrine of “fairness.” Of equality of outcome, a specious leveling sameness to be enforced by the government (but never applied to those who are the government; they – like Orwell’s animals – are more equal than others).

Abe then croons about a “great civil war.”

But a civil war is a fight over who shall control the government of one country. Wars of independence are something else entirely.

Britain had a civil war when the royalists fought Cromwell’s army. The Southern states of America, on the other hand, wished to create their own country, to be independent. They seceded from a union of states they’d entered into voluntarily, for their mutual benefit, when that union no longer seemed to them beneficial.

They expressed no desire to control the Northern states or the government in Washington. They simply desired to depart from the union. As the colonies departed, those four score and seven years ago.

Abe determined to bring the Southern states back into the union at bayonet-point – just as King George had hoped (but failed) to do those four score and seven years ago.

What occurred during the period 1861-1865 should properly be described as the War of Southern Secession, the War for Southern Independence or – perhaps more fittingly – the War of Federal Aggression.

It was the North which sought to conquer the South and bring it to heel.

If what occurred during 1861-1865 was a “civil war” then what happened in 1776-1783 was also a “civil” war and not a war of secession and independence from Great Britain. Which of course is nonsense. The American colonies, like the Southern states, merely wished to depart from a political union which, in their eyes, no longer benefitted them. The parent country fought this tooth and nail. The American colonies won their freedom from Great Britain.

The Southern states lost theirs to Washington.

Here the cry of slavery! will eruct. But slavery is neither here nor there regarding the question of “civil” war. The fact remains that what occurred was not a “civil” war any more than the American war for independence from Great Britain was a civil war.

If, that is, words – beautiful or not – have meaning.

The next words Abe deploys are particularly lovely but even more despicable, as they play on tragedy to achieve his ends:

“We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.”

But the Southern men who died on that field did not fight for “that nation.” They fought and died for their nation – i.e., the Confederacy. Which was slain on that field so that the government in Washington could live to lord it over the Southern people.

This does not sound pretty but it is nonetheless the fact.

Abe’s audacity then reaches its monstrous apogee. He concludes his elegiac masterpiece – and in literary as well as propagandistic terms it deserves that honor – with the following:

“… we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

This is as haltingly brazen as it is gorgeously written.

A “new birth of freedom”?

Not for the Southerners who sought the freedom to go in peace and be left in peace. Nor for the principle of freedom itself – which is a meaningless principle without self-determination.

Not merely the Southern states lost this freedom – without which there is no freedom. Since 1865, every American has been un-free to determine for himself the course of his own life, to pursue happiness. Is a subject of the government in Washington, which perhaps allows him certain conditional privileges, but is unbound as far as lacking the power to do as it pleases to him, whenever it suits.

And “government of the people, by the people”? How is it that this passes without roars of outrage at the abuse of language? The Southern people wished for – fought for – exactly this thing. To govern themselves rather than be governend by Washington.

Which Abe and his armies committed mass murder to deny them.

Whether one likes the Southern states – or approves of the Confederacy – is (again) an irrelevance as regards the question at hand – as regards the deconstruction of Dishonest Abe’s oily but admittedly handsome words.

The South sought self-determination. To not be governed by the North. To have a government its people consented to.

That is the fact, which Abe’s rhetoric so brilliantly turned upside down.

. . .

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44 COMMENTS

The State historians are professional liars. Wars are fought for Power, Control, and Money. Propaganda and lies are used to demonize the enemy, to deceive the masses. Historical Revisionists are more Right than they are wrong. “When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.”.

Indeed. The deification of Lincoln is perhaps the best example of this. This man destroyed any pretense of consensual government yet is worshipped as the savior of it. This shyster lawyer for the rail companies is described as the homespun rail splitter. It would be ridiculous – laughable – were it not so horribly true.

Yup. Similarly – as you know – Abe is portrayed as The Great Emancipator, who fought the war to liberate black slaves. In fact, he was all for slavery – provided it was within the context of “the union.” If the Southern states had not seceded, he would have defended slavery – he promised to do so! And, of course, the Emancipation Proclamation was a war measure which did not apply to slaves held in Northern states.

Why should there be a right to secede unless the new nation is more free than the previous? Heck, Libertarian hate the Free Tibet movement because the Dalai Lama were worse rulers the Communist Chinese. The New America was less free for most people after Revolutionary War – Natives lost their lands, slavery was strengthened, the average man now paid 3x the taxes than before, etc. Likewise how did the Confederacy represent freedom except for the wealthy men running it? It’s not freedom unless it’s freedom to everyone rather than to those at the top.

An individual has the natural right to not associate with anyone – for any reason. That is the principle behind secession. Further, no government can claim legitimacy which lacks the specific consent of those governed. The North lacked any consent to govern the people of the South.

Nowhere did the Constitution of 1787 ever mention the word “equality” in any form. “Equality” first appears in the “Equal Protection Clause” of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, which was clearly intended to make all legislation equally applicable to whites and to black freedmen.

In that context, it was innocuous enough. But the Equal Protection Clause has been distorted out of context by activist courts… as we’ll soon see, it will probably be applied next to require that a 50-year old male pervert has he “constitutional right” to put on lipstick and fishnet and piss in the ladies’ room next to a five-year-old girl…

The other day, I was discussing this business of people “identifying” as female when biologically male – and insisting other people accept that they are in fact, female. Well, ok. If that flies, then what about the 60-year-old who insists he is actually a 17 year old and therefore has the right to engage in sexual acts with someone “his own age”?

I myself have long known in my heart that I am in fact a crustacean. A lobster, to be specific. I demand that people accept me as such. That restaurants install brine tanks for me, else be hauled into court for discrimination against my lobsterness.

No shit eric. The 43 year old that “identified” as 6 years old and was the all time leader in T ball in Kalifornicatia is a good example. His team mates wanted to raise him and show the world their greatest player after he “won” the championship but there was only a couple dozen and they couldn’t lift his worthless fat ass……and we wonder why this country is taking a collective shit society wise.

I am seriously considering coming out as a lobster. I have known since I was a child that I am one. Do not be deceived by my bipedalism and apparent endoskeleton. They are just constructs of society, imposed on me. In fact, I have an exoskeleton and demand that accommodations be made for my claws and appendages. I insist a brine tank be installed for my use at every “public” place, including restaurants – where they had better not have others of my kind on the menu…

You are either not very bright or deliberately choosing to “not understand” what has been explained to you probably dozens of times here: Libertarians hold that all people have the same rights; no one has different or superior rights. These rights are absolute ownership of oneself and the products of one’s mind and physical labor; the right to be left in peace, provided one causes no harm to to others.

The beat goes on in the form of the New Deal. Just read this on Hornberger’s blog about similarities between Musolini, Hitler and Roosevelt in their support of forcibly taking productive people’s money to give to those who don’t produce. Not exactly what the founding fathers had in mind….even though Washington was glad to enforce a tax on whiskey farmers making “too much money” I suppose was the thinking…??? People with the “law” at hand wanting to profit by force.

A paragraph taken from his blog today: To gain a deeper understanding of how revolutionary the New Deal was, read the book Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt’s America, Mussolini’s Italy, and Hitler’s Germany, 1933-1939 by Wolfgang Schivelbusch, which details the similarities between the economic philosophy and programs of Roosevelt, Mussolini, and Adolf Hitler. Or just read this review of the book at reason.com by David Boaz of the Cato Institute.

One could deconstruct this even more. The principle the South articulated was that of state sovereignty; i.e., each state was exactly that – a state, in the political sense. An independent nation. Not a gau of the federal union. This was accepted by everyone at the time of the American revolution. When Jefferson referred to his “country,” he meant Virginia. People spoke of the United States – plural. The British government signed a peace treaty with each of the sovereign states.

It is extremely doubtful the federal Constitution would have been accepted had people understood that it meant their “countries” – their home states – were now the permanent gaus of the federal union.

My hope for the future is that the United-at-bayonet-point-States will peacefully devolve into individual states. I would prefer a completely free system of political anarchy – that is, no coercive government at all. But power diffused is liberty enhanced.

The history of the world would likely have been very much less violent had the Southern states successfully decoupled from the Northern states.

The above is more in line with a pamphlet than a book but is heavily footnoted throughout.

Johnstone actually was an officer in the Confederate Army during the War of Northern Aggression. After the war, he found, through research, Lincoln was actually waging war against the Confederacy before the incident at Fort Sumter. Of course, it took Johnstone years to put together the information to show that Lincoln was a waging illegal war and lying when it came to peace with the Confederacy. This is due to certain members of the U. S. Government scattering and hiding the information after the war ended to keep it secret.

Fact is Lincoln was pissed his tax base had the unmitigated gall to figuratively tell him to F. O. and withdraw their consent to be enslaved by him and the northern money interest. Lincoln and his cronies literally meant to make an example of the South and show the Confederacy who’s boss!

Good morning eric. It was an indication of who was really pulling the strings when Britain’s bitterest enemies supported the Confederacy. It was GB’s intention, and it worked, to bring the “colonies” back into it’s power via the bank, even if the south had to be burned as in scorched earth policy. Since Confederates only had the right to die after the war it was easy to write the history any old way they wanted.

I’m reminded of several years ago when a petition to withdraw Texas from the union went viral in just hours and reached the quarter million mark before you could say “don’t”. Once the requisite number of legal citizens had petitioned the US it was considered…..and rejected since, in the words of whatever dick was in charge at the time because there exists no means of doing it as said dick declared. He couldn’t read the Constitution either. And so it goes……

The Declaration which Abe selectively quotes also says after all men being created equal, “they are endowed with certain unalienable Right, among these [but not limited to] Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. That in order to secure these Rights governments are instituted among men DERIVING THEIR JUST POWERS FROM THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED.

How much consent did those in the Confederacy, governed by Rome on the Potomac, give to Abe and his henchmen?

“the doctrine of “fairness.” Of equality of outcome, a specious leveling sameness to be enforced by the government (but never applied to those who are the government; they – like Orwell’s animals – are more equal than others).”

“…land owning White Protestant males, now they are the financial and media elite.”

This is false, and is a typical, perhaps intentional, distraction to fuel the anti-White, anti-male hysteria infecting our society.

At the corporate and senior editorial levels the mainstream media are nearly 100% Jewish. The fiat, debt-based, usurious money vampire squid and the central banking cabal are entirely an enterprise created, owned, and controlled by of the Rothschild dynasty and collaborating families like the Warburg’s, Kuhn’s, Loeb’s, Schiff’s – all of them international Jewish elites.

Here’s a quote from George Carlin that sums it up pretty well.
“Think of how it all started: America was founded by slave owners who informed us, “All men are created equal.” All “men,” except Indians, niggers, and women. Remember, the founders were a small group of unelected, white, male, land-holding slave owners who also, by the way, suggested their class be the only one allowed to vote. To my mind, that is what’s known as being stunningly–and embarrassingly–full of shit.”

It is interesting to note that the “Emancipation Proclamation” only applied to the “states in rebellion”, NOT to the northern states. Slavery (involuntary servitude) was still “the law of the land” in the Union states. For those who criticize the Confederate “Stars and Bars” as being a symbol of slavery, slavery, it is a fact that slavery existed under the AMERICAN flag for a much longer time…

You are correct. At the risk of getting kicked off this site, I must point out the “elephant in the room”. If you are not of the “chosen”, you are considered to be “(sub)human livestock with souls”, born only to serve the “chosen”. It’s all in their Talmud…

Well, no. The Emancipation Proclamation said that slavery would end in certain designated areas of the Confederacy, mostly under Confederate control at the time, whenever the US Army conquered those areas, on or after January 1st of 1863. The practical effect was that tens of thousands of slaves were freed on January 1st, and that most but not areas of the Confederacy had their slaves freed sometime after the Confederate surrender on April 9th, but before the Amendment that outlawed it everywhere in the US. The Juneteenth celebration is about how slaves in Texas that did not know that the war had ended were told on June 19th by an army general that they were free.

I misspoke — your second paragraph is completely accurate, even though Lincoln was making an offer he knew damn well wouldn’t be accepted.

The first paragraph would need quite a bit of qualification to reflect the mixed bag of free and not-free areas for slaves after the CSA surrender, and the de facto versus de jure effect of the surrender.

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Eric started out writing about cars for mainstream media outlets such as The Washington Times, Detroit News and Free Press, Investors Business Daily, The American Spectator, National Review, The Chicago Tribune and Wall Street Journal.